News Broadcasting
Zee News goes interactive on Dish TV, sports to follow
NEW DELHI: Dish TV, India’s first DTH platform, announced that Zee News channel has gone interactive and Zee Sports is to follow suit from mid-September.
Talking to indiantelevision.com on the issue, Dish TV business head Jawahar Goel added that apart from interactivity, Dish TV subscribers can also enjoy all Star channels at no extra cost till 30 September.
“Interactivity is something that we had promised our subscribers as part of value-added services and over a period of time we have readied ourselves with the right technology,” Goel said.
Dish TV interactive services also consists of a gaming channel and electronic programming guide.
An interactive Zee News will enable a viewer to watch a live programming, while simultaneously giving him or her option to access information on a variety of other topics via eight windows.
Information can be had in the areas of business, entertainment, crime, sports, top 10 news stories and weather report of 100 Indian cities, apart from the live news bulletin or programme being aired at the moment.
How does this work? A subscriber of Dish TV wants to see whether Indian tennis sensation Sania Mirza has won her latest match in the on going US Opens or not and cannot wait for the sports segments to come in the news bulletin.
So, while a news bulletin is on on Zee News, a few presses of the buttons can take the viewer straight to the sports section for the Sania news story even as the main news bulletin continues.
To facilitate interactivity on the Dish TV platform, the company has tied up with the US-based Open TV, a company specializing in such activities and features.
Apart from news, Dish TV is also planning to go interactive with sports, starting with Zee Sports. Sports interactivity will involve freezing of shots from a particular angle, getting player details immediately without having to wait for the sports channel providing it and statistics about the game in progress and sports in general.
The interactive Zee Sports will start on Dish TV with the tri-nation cricket series involving India, Australia and another country at a neutral ground from mid-September for which Zee has the telecast rights.
India began commercial DTH operations in October 2003 and by December 2004 reported over three million subscribers.
Hong Kong-based market research firm Media Partners Asia (MPA) has said India is poised to become Asia’s leading cable market by 2010, the largest satellite market by 2008 and the most lucrative pay TV market by 2015.
Presently, apart from Dish TV (over 1.25 million subscribers), other DTH players active in India are Tata Sky and pubcaster Doordarshan, which provides a subscription-free service of free to air channels through DD Direct+ that has over 1.1 million subscribers.
News Broadcasting
News TV viewership jumps 33 per cent as West Asia war draws audiences
BARC Week 8 data shows news share rising to 8 per cent despite T20 World Cup
NEW DELHI:Â Even as individual television news channel ratings remain under a temporary pause, the genre itself is seeing a clear surge in audience attention.
According to the latest data from Broadcast Audience Research Council India, television news recorded a 33 per cent jump in genre share in Week 8 of 2026, covering February 28 to March 6.
The news genre accounted for 8 per cent of total television viewership during the week, up from 6 per cent the previous week. The spike in attention coincided with escalating geopolitical tensions involving the United States, Israel and Iran, which have kept global headlines firmly fixed on West Asia.
The rise is notable because it came at a time when cricket was dominating television screens. The high-stakes stages of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup, including the Super 8 fixtures and semi-finals, were being broadcast during the same period.
Despite the cricket frenzy, viewers appeared to be toggling between sport and global affairs, boosting the overall share of news programming.
The surge in genre share comes even as the government has enforced a one-month pause on publishing ratings for individual news channels. The move followed regulatory scrutiny of the television ratings ecosystem.
While channel-level rankings remain temporarily out of sight, the genre-level data suggests that when global tensions escalate, audiences continue to turn to television news for real-time updates.
